After service under the governor of Steiermark, or Styria, Bienerth was transferred to the Austrian Ministry of Education (1886), of which in 1905 he was named director and elevated to the Privy Council. Appointed minister of the interior for Austria (June 1906), he became a supporter of the ministerial program of suffrage reform. In November 1908, upon the resignation of Max, Baron von Beck, and with the patronage of the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Lexa von Aehrenthal, he succeeded Beck as Austrian prime minister. In the manner of his predecessor, Bienerth planned Czech and German reconciliation in Bohemia through a program of territorial autonomy, but, lacking Beck’s competence, he accomplished little toward this end. Unable to command a parliamentary majority after the elections of 1911, he resigned; subsequently he served as Statthalter (“governor”) of lower Austria (1911–15).